


A Taste of the Captain's Daughter

by MarkoftheAsphodel



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Seisen no Keifu | Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War
Genre: F/M, Light Bondage, Pegging, Sibling Love, Wedding Night
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2020-02-28 20:42:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18763846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarkoftheAsphodel/pseuds/MarkoftheAsphodel
Summary: On the seas between Orgahill and Silesse, Brigid takes stock of her life-- the ship in her command, the sister and heritage restored to her, and the pretty thing she's claimed as hers.





	A Taste of the Captain's Daughter

**Author's Note:**

> This is an old-ass story where I finally updated the names from "Bridget" and "Aideen" to the post-FEH localizations and decided to publish it. This kinda/sorta fits into an overall Brigid/Finn 'fic continuity I have going but functions as a standalone.

She had the wind at her back and the wheel in her hands, and the coast of Agustria was a pale line growing fainter in the distance. In possession of her ship again, Brigid felt in possession of _herself_ in a way she hadn’t since Dobarl had rejected her authority on the grounds that she wasn’t the captain’s true daughter.

Well, what did Dobarl know, anyway? Brigid nudged her headband back into place and cast a glance out across the waters. The escort of falcoknights guiding them to Silesse looked as improbable as the sprays of flying fish that leapt around them as they sailed toward Queen Rahna’s safe harbor. She didn’t know what pegasi ate and she hoped it wasn’t anything rare and expensive. _Luck Dragon_ would be hard-pressed to feed its cargo of princes and princesses and assorted nobles, even though she had but a skeleton crew manning her.

And Brigid was one of those nobles. That, it its own way, was as difficult to stomach as the truth about Father had been.

-x-

“Take her over for a while, Birdie,” Brigid called to her second mate, who’d stayed loyal to her when the quartermaster and bos’n had their little mutiny. “I want to look in on my sister.”

“Aye, Cap’n.”

Birdie wasn’t much worried that Brigid wasn’t the true daughter of _Luck Dragon_ ’s late captain, as he’d mostly been concerned that they’d all get paid for escorting one last party of travelers to a safe haven through waters infested with less honorable seafarers. Brigid assured him that Queen Rahna would reward them all handsomely for bringing Prince Lewyn to Silesse in one piece and that was enough for Birdie, so Brigid had no qualms about handing him the wheel while she checked on Edain. 

The “guest quarters” on _Luck Dragon_ weren’t spacious, and Brigid feared that Edain would be sick in her windowless cabin, but she found Edain perched on the edge of the bunk, sewing a few hasty decorations on her veil for tomorrow’s wedding. Brigid watched her sister’s fingers as the needle turned a bare patch of organza into a bright camellia blossom.

“I never learned to embroider like that,” she offered. “I can put on a button and sew a dead man into his shroud, but I can’t make something that beautiful.”

Edain glanced up, her lips curved in a little wistful smile, and Brigid thought they both felt the weight of all the years they’d missed.

“Those are more useful skills in these terrible times than making silken flowers,” Edain said.

Brigid smiled back, but she suspected her own expression was even more tight and wan than her twin’s.

“Are you well?” she asked.

“Yes, quite. Not a trace of sickness,” Edain said, and her smile was a little less pensive as she brushed at her rounded belly.

“Good,” said Brigid. Did she sound too brusque? Going from the world of Orgahill and her crew into this new world where she had a twin sister about to be married and a niece or nephew on the way made Brigid doubt that she’d place her feet on solid ground with the next step.

It was good. It was wonderful, of course it was. But it wasn’t what she thought her part in life was supposed to be.

“You’ll be beautiful tomorrow,” Brigid said, and Edain responded by taking her sister’s hand in her own. Edain’s hand was soft but her nails were clipped down, like a working cleric’s hand and not a noblewoman’s. Not that different from Brigid’s own hand, maybe.

Brigid hoped her smile wasn’t as strained as it felt. Edain deserved the best she could give.

-x-

“I’ll take her from here, Birdie,” Brigid said once she was back on deck.

“Aye,” he said. Since she hadn’t technically dismissed him, he loitered around, giving her a look like a hungry gull.

“I should make you the first mate, shouldn’t I?” she said aloud. “Well, I’ve said it, so it’s done, but we can promote you in front of the others at supper tonight.”

“It’s a great honor, Cap’n.” Still, he waited on her with that expectant look in his small black eyes. 

Brigid glanced at her new first mate out of the corner of the eye. “What’s wrong, Birdie? Trouble with one of our esteemed guests?”

“Not exactly, Cap’n.”

“Then what is it?”

“This, boy-- ah-- _young man_ you’ve taken. You’re not planning to hand him the ship, are you?”

“Never.”

“Aye.” Birdie nodded, his usual fluttery movements slowed down to something almost solemn. “That’s for the best. He doesn’t know the first thing about the sea-- twice he’s called this fair lady a ‘boat’ already.”

“Oh dear,” Brigid said under her breath. 

“I’m your man and true, Cap’n. Your father called you his daughter to his dying breath and that’s good enough for me. But being a captain’s daughter isn’t enough to make a captain. A captain is made by guts and wits and good decisions, you know that. And a captain can surely be unmade by a poor decision.”

She waited in silence for this unexpected judgement from the little odd man who’d proved her main ally on the crew she’d once thought to command without question.

“And turning this _ship_ over to some lad from the land of pretty horses where they don’t know from boats isn’t the act of a captain.”

“Understood, Birdie,” she replied. “I’ll set our fair lady aflame and send her to the bottom before I’ll dishonor her in the way you fear.”

“Aye, Cap’n.” 

And that, Brigid hoped, was the end of that.

-x-

Brigid let her new first mate take the wheel again about an hour before supper. She returned to her quarters at the stern of the ship, where the lad from the land of pretty horses was waiting for her.

She knew exactly why Birdie and her remaining crew viewed Finn as something ornamental— or worse, as some exotic pet acquired from a foreign land. His white gloves and breeches were spotless, the silvery-white satin trim glistened on his jacket like pearl inlay on a piece of jewelry, and the way tendrils of azure hair fell into his eyes and over his ears made him look younger than he was. He looked like the kind of boy the less honorable sort of pirate would be holding for ransom. 

The fact was, he’d taken out several of the mutineers with his elegantly barbed lance and wasn’t the least afraid to get those white gloves covered in filth. But to see him now, sitting at the edge of her bed looking for all the world like schoolboy complete with a book in his hand, Brigid knew exactly why the crew didn’t want him anywhere near _Luck Dragon’s_ helm.

“Have you been amusing yourself?”

She’d wanted him to do just that, as there were plenty of amusements on hand in the cabin, but instead he’d selected the most boring book in her modest library for his pleasure.

“There’s a fascinating passage on the means of taking down wyvern squadrons during a sea battle,” he said, watching her over the edge of the book, like he knew damn well he ought to be just a little abashed at being so earnest when there was no pressing need to be.

“Yes, fascinating,” Brigid said, as her fingers traced over a small carved panel where her strongbox was hiding. “Ah. Here we go.”

Brigid had wondered, before regaining her ship, if Dobarl had stolen the cat just to spite her. But it was there all right, with its carved wooden handle wrapped in scarlet leather and its tassel of nine silken cords all beautifully knotted. 

“That’s not for whipping your crew.” Finn said. He was only pretending to read now, and she thought he’d gone just a little pale.

“Of course not.” She gave the cat an experimental flick to see how her technique was holding up. “It doesn’t pay to play favorites with your own crew. I was keeping this for something special.”

She heard the book snap shut, a response to the call of her cat.

Schoolboy wasn’t really the right word, Brigid thought as she bound Finn’s pliant wrists to the brass support pole in the center of her cabin. Acolyte, maybe? Leading him into things was something else again, because he went on his knees before her in the same spirit that she’d seen the time they’d gone to church together. She’d paid a lad before to play like this with her, a delicate-framed creature from a port town of Silesse who looked like he’d bruise just from seeing the cat, but his bought obedience for the night wasn’t anything like the obedience Finn offered up to her. She stared at him, studying his closed eyes with quivering lashes, his tipped-up chin, the way his lips seemed to form some word ever on the verge of being said.

_How can you trust me so completely after only a matter of weeks? How can you navigate a world where loyalty is this cheap and not fear I might wring your neck?_

The sanctity of his trust made Brigid’s mouth dry and stilled the heat in her blood. When she brought the cat down on his bare shoulder, it was only in a tickle, meant to make him squirm and laugh until his fervor dissolved into tears.

-x- 

Brigid promoted Birdie as promised during supper that night, which brought a round of hearty applause from the remainder of her crew and Sigurd’s party both. She felt completely in her element at supper, what with her crew content and as respectful as ever they got and her “guests” as merry as a motley crew of fugitives bound for exile might be. 

“You’ll spend tonight with me, right?” Brigid asked her sister, for even on the grey seas north of Orgahill she’d learned that respectable ladies spent the last unmarried night in the company of their female kin. 

“Of course,” said Edain, and they spent the night together in Brigid’s cabin with all men banished from the scene, cuddling like a pair of kittens just as they had so long ago in the life Brigid had only begun to remember. 

“That little rascal your sister keeps in her party was peeping on you, Cap’n,” Birdie said in the morning.

“I’ll put his eyes out,” Brigid replied without hesitation. 

Dew had made himself a nuisance in more ways than she could count, but Edain talked her twin down from any violence against the wretched little thief.

“If he peeps on either of us tonight, I’ll let him have it,” Brigid vowed.

But this was, after all, a day of joy, and that made it a day of mercy. Dew was in the party to witness through both eyes as Brigid, in the full finery due her as _Luck Dragon_ ’s captain, united her sister in marriage with Claude of Edda there on the deck beneath the billowing mainsail. Then it was Brigid’s own turn to be joined to her “lad from the land of pretty horses” by the illustrious Bishop Claude. Brigid couldn’t help, in that moment, to compare herself against her sister. Edain looked the perfect bride, serene and radiant with golden curls spilling out beneath that flower-strewn veil as her white dress streamed in the breeze. How did Brigid come across in her captain’s coat and trousers— a girl playing dress-up in a borrowed hat?

_You’re giving this old ship up as soon as you dock in Silesse. Does it matter?_

And Brigid touched her lips to Finn’s before the crew and honored guests, not as a pirate captain claiming a prize but as a bride bound to her groom before all gods and men.

-x-

Edain had said she didn’t need a honeymoon cabin with Claude, that any niceties could wait until they landed safely in Silesse. As the state of Edain’s belly made it clear enough a honeymoon was an afterthought, Brigid didn’t argue much with her sister over who had the right to the most spacious cabin on their joint wedding night.

Brigid had the passing thought as she bound Finn’s wrists to the brass pole that Dew might be watching. If the rascal was, she was going to give him an eyeful…

“Is that…?"

Bright color rose in Finn’s cheeks as he watched Brigid extract a new and even more exotic toy from the strongbox where she kept her cat.

"It’s exactly what it looks like,” Brigid replied as she stepped over the fine coat Finn had borrowed from his lord for the ceremony. She didn’t believe that he’d never seen a lady’s comforter before, but Brigid felt dead certain that Finn had never beheld anything like this, carved out of Silessian pegasus horn and ornamented in gold, with a hidden chamber of aromatic oil that she’d learned to release at just the right time. “It gets lonely out on the seas.”

“You should not be lonely anymore.” 

From tall muscle-bound Chulainn that would’ve been a boast. From Sir Midir of dogged loyalty to House Jungby that would’ve been a sworn oath. From Finn, this squire she’d turned from his master’s side as True North tugs at the needle of a compass, it sounded more like a prayer offered up with bright eyes and wobbly knees.

“I won’t be.” She ran her fingers down his neck and along his shoulders, squaring his hips and nudging his legs into place. Once Finn was positioned just so against the pole, she leaned in to nip at his earlobe and whisper into his hair. “And for tonight, and until we touch the frozen shores of Silesse, you and this ship are equally mine."

She heard a sharp intake of breath as she touched her tongue to the curve of his ear and then Finn managed one sentence through wind-burnt lips.

“I am at your command, Captain.”

Brigid almost hoped that little brat of a thief was watching her now. None of the titles she was born to— Crusader of Jungby, heiress to Yewfelle— mattered in this moment. All that mattered was the thing she knew herself to be in the little world enclosed by _Luck Dragon_ ’s hull. Master. Commander. 

_Captain._

Brigid smiled and lay claim to her prize.

**Author's Note:**

> I did a bit of research on pirate crews (the Caribbean sort especially) in writing this and realized that a) pirate captains were usually elected and b) quartermasters held a lot of the power so technically in trying to claim her (adoptive) father's ship and crew, Brigid is pirating all wrong and they were right to rebel. But the game doesn't see it that way so eh.
> 
> Also, yes, the "captain's daughter" was a nickname for the cat o' ninetails.


End file.
